


small boats in deep waters

by TabooMonster123



Series: secrets crawling through the grapevines [1]
Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Coming Out, Gaku is mentioned, Gen, Implied Relationships, Male Homosexuality, Mentions of homophobia, Other characters implied, also Tsumugi, discussions of the consequences of outing and being outed, mentions of internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 00:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabooMonster123/pseuds/TabooMonster123
Summary: A playful conversation on their day off turns abruptly serious and leads Yuki to ask questions that Momo isn’t prepared to answer. For Yuki’s sake, he tries to anyway.





	small boats in deep waters

Re:vale’s rare days off were often spent in their living room watching TV dramas and painting each other’s nails. It was an all-day ordeal if they wanted both toes and fingers to have four coats of polish each. They spent so much of their time out, doing other things, going on adventures for work, so days off were for reminding themselves that they were human, and what better way to do that than to laze about and let Momo braid Yuki’s hair?

So, naturally, they’d decided to spend this day in particular on their living room couch, feet in each other’s laps, TV on low, while the room’s air slowly filled with the scent of newly opened nail polish. Yuki was listening diligently as Momo gossipped about their kouhai. His latest victim was Gaku.

“I almost feel bad for him,” Momo was saying, “except he really needs to be more clear with Tsumugi. Dancing around the topic, as suave as he is, won’t get him anywhere with someone who’s so straightforward.”

“Do you think she really has no idea?” Yuki asked.

Momo shrugged. “She certainly seems to like him,” he said. “But whether that’s just as a fan or something more, I’m not sure.”

Yuki hummed thoughtfully.

“In the meantime, we get to watch them dance around each other like headless chickens! I’m tempted to start a betting pool.” Momo waved his hand around exaggeratedly, nearly flicking nail polish onto the upholstery in the process.

“Minimum bid?”

“1000 yen, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Momo laughed. “I’ll take a 10% cut as the pot holder, so even if my guess is off I’ll get something out of it. The real question, actually, is whether they’ll get their shit together before those other tw—”

Yuki looked up when Momo cut himself off. “Before who?”

Momo’s grip on Yuki’s ankle tightened slightly. “No one! Sorry, I got confused.”

“I don't believe you.” Yuki’s eyes narrowed and he put the polish wand back in its bottle.

“It’s nothing!” Momo insisted, purposely loosening his grip. “I just—” He stopped again.

Rubbing his partner’s leg, Yuki searched Momo’s face, cataloguing the set of his mouth, the tick in his jaw, his furrowed brow. “Whatever it is,” Yuki said eventually, “It’s clearly bothering you.”

Momo sighed. “I do want to tell you, but…”

“But?”

Another sigh. “But also I don’t.” Momo raised his head and stared Yuki in the eye, serious. “I don’t want it to be real,” he admitted.

Yuki frowned. “Why not? Is ‘it’ bad?”

“Not really,” Momo said. “Just… difficult, and complicated.”

Yuki squeezed his calf reassuringly. “Days off are for letting go,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s possible for you to let go of this entirely, but at least I can help you shoulder it going forward.”

Momo nodded, considering Yuki’s words carefully. He set to work painting his partner’s next toenail, mouth opening and closing as he worked out what he wanted to say.

“Two of our kouhai are interested in each other.”

Yuki’s breath caught in his throat. Whatever he’d been anticipating, it wasn’t that. “Our kouhai” could only be IDOLiSH7 or TRIGGER members, which meant…

“They’re both guys,” he realized. No wonder Momo was so worried: that kind of scandal was career ending in this industry.

Momo nodded, confirming. “I’m not sure if they’ve realized how they feel yet,” he explained. “One of them I’m sure doesn’t know, but the other…”

“Do you think he knows the other—?”

“Oh! No,” Momo clarified. “Definitely not. Neither of them knows how the other feels. It’s about whether or not they recognize their own feelings.”

“Are you going to get involved?” Yuki asked. He could understand the temptation to; making the two in question aware of their own feelings for each other could help protect them from others who might notice, as Momo had, and use those emotions against them. On the other hand…

“I’d have to be very careful about it,” Momo said. “If I bring it up before either of them are ready, it could hurt them badly, to the point where they could refuse to accept their…  _ inclinations _ towards men altogether. I don’t think they’re the type to take out their self-denial on each other, but even then they could both end up taking it out on themselves, which is almost as bad.”

Yuki took a moment to absorb this information, finally returning to painting Momo’s toenails. “You think one of them has figured it out, though?”

“Either that or he’s really close, it’s hard to tell. But he’s more self-aware than the other one, and he talks to him the same way he did to Tsumugi, so—”

“It’s  _ Gaku?!” _ Yuki yelped.

“What?  _ No!” _ Momo’s hand spasmed, narrowly missing Yuki’s foot with the brush. “I mean—”

“No, you’re right, that makes no sense,” Yuki muttered half to himself. “Gaku’s not the type to like more than one person at a time…”

Momo bit his lip. “Anyway,” he continued, “That one I figured out because he acts the same toward people he likes regardless of gender; the other one was more because he wears his heart on his sleeve.”

Yuki considered each of his kouhai in turn, trying to figure out how he would notice those kinds of feelings for another man from each of them, and found that he couldn’t, not really.

“You must be seeing something I don’t,” he said.

Momo laughed self-consciously, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess,” he said, kind of oddly.

“‘I guess’?” Yuki repeated, curious.

Momo shifted, jostling the foot still in his lap, and something clicked in the back of Yuki’s mind as he finally picked up on something Momo decidedly  _ wasn’t _ saying.

_ I don’t want it to be real. _

Yuki put the bottle of nail polish on the coffee table and screwed the top on before moving Momo’s foot out of his lap so he could sit next to his partner, slowly, so as not to scare him. From the tension in his shoulders when Yuki sat down he hadn’t been entirely successful, but Momo still allowed him to take the other bottle from him and put it safely away before Yuki turned his body towards him and took Momo’s hands in his.

Momo stared at his lap, refusing to meet his eyes. Gently, Yuki said, “Look at me,” and when Momo flicked his gaze fearfully up from under his lashes the concern that had been coiling in Yuki’s stomach wrapped itself tightly around his gut.

“I’m going to ask you a question,” Yuki murmured. “If you don’t want to answer it, you can walk away, and I won’t bring it up again.”

“You clearly already know the answer,” Momo rasped, eyes flicking around trying to find somewhere other than Yuki’s face to rest. “Why are you asking me if you’ve already figured it out?!”

“Because I want to hear it from you,” Yuki answered. “So I’m going to ask. Just this once.”

Momo was silent, his stare finally settled somewhere over Yuki’s shoulder, resigned.

“Momo, are you gay?”

Jaw shaking, Momo swallowed, and Yuki brought one of his hands up to hold the back of his head and rub at his ear comfortingly. Momo took a deep, steadying breath, then let it out slowly.

“Yeah,” he whispered, then said, louder, “Yes, I am.”

Yuki nodded. “Okay,” he said, and when tears started dripping down Momo’s face he pulled him closer and whispered, “Thank you for telling me.”

Momo’s shoulders started to shake. Yuki pulled him fully into the hug just as he choked back a sob. “It’s okay to cry.”

“I’ve never told anyone that before,” Momo cried into Yuki’s t-shirt. Yuki buried his head into Momo’s shoulder in response, desperately trying to keep his composure for his partner’s sake.

“That’s how you know about our kouhai liking each other,” Yuki realized. “You saw yourself in them.”

Momo nodded, pulling back to wipe at his face. “ i've gone through the same thing all by myself, so I want to help them so they have someone to go to, but— I don’t know if I  _ can.” _ He took in a deep, shuddering breath, then continued, “I can’t think of a way to really show them I understand without outing myself.”

Yuki covered his mouth with his hand, trying to hide the frown starting to mar his face. “I can think of a few ways that could cause problems…”

“There are way too many,” Momo groaned. “They could take me coming out to them as pressure to come out themselves, or they could go entirely into denial (‘I’m not like you, senpai! It’s different!’); I could be wrong, and they would then have this thing they could hold over my head; I could be  _ right _ and they could  _ still _ choose to hold it over me.”

“That last one seems… unlikely, Momo.”

“My paranoia about this has kept me  _ safe _ , Yuki,” he said. “And it’s not just them who could hurt me. If anyone were to over hear… Or if they decide to try to be together, and they get outed, my involvement could easily come out, too, which could cast suspicion on me…”

“Momo,” Yuki said, voice breaking.

“The thing is,” Momo interrupted, “Once it’s out there, I can’t take it back. Whoever knows has this power over me that I will never be able to control, and even if I tell someone who’s trustworthy now, they could still turn around on me in five, ten, even twenty years, and I would have no way of stopping them.”

Yuki’s breath caught in his throat. Momo wasn’t talking about their two kouhai anymore, nor was he talking about their imaginary potential eavesdroppers— Momo was talking about  _ him, _ about Yuki one day outing him and ruining his career, his  _ life, _ and that hurt more than anything else did.

“You really think I’d betray you like that?  _ Really?!” _ Yuki spat, close to tears, all compunctions about keeping his composure gone.

“That’s not it!” Momo shot back. “It’s not that I don’t trust you! I do! But I can’t see the future, Yuki!” He was crying again— they both were, Yuki realized. “I love Yuki more than anything,” Momo sobbed. “I hate having to think like this, but I can’t help it.”

Yuki’s hands gripped Momo’s shirt tightly, still where they were when he’d held him earlier. “That sort of logic doesn’t help anything, Momo,” he said, voice shaking. “That level of fear and paranoia hurts you more than it helps. It’ll keep you from living the life you deserve to have.”

“And what kind of life is that?” Momo asked, still upset.

“A happy one,” Yuki replied. “And… one where you know you are loved, too.”

Momo was quiet for a second. “Yuki…”

“I don’t tell you this often enough,” Yuki started, “But—”

“—You don’t have to—”

“—Momo is my most important person,” Yuki insisted. “I love you, too.”

Momo sobbed, curling into Yuki, and this time Yuki leaned back and pulled his partner down so he could tangle their bodies together on the couch, pressing Momo’s forehead to his.

“For your sake, I won’t make any promises about the future,” Yuki said. “But I will say that I would not be here without you, and I hope I can someday make you understand just how important you really are to me.”

There was still so much left unsaid and unresolved— their kouhai’s situation still needed to be addressed, and there was more to their “I love you”s than was being acknowledged— but what was more important at that moment was Momo and Yuki, together, soaking up each other’s warmth and comfort in the safety of their living room.

“Yuki?”

“Yes Momo?”

“We didn’t finish our toes.”

“That’s okay. We can finish them later.”

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO THERE this is not what I thought I'd be posting next, but I guess it happened anyway. This is the closest i've gotten to breaching the 2k mark on my own, so I'm pretty pleased! I've actually only seen the game through part 2, so if this seems out of place then that might be why. (Is this OOC? Do I actually care? Only time and comments will tell huhuhu)
> 
> Also, I would love to hear which two kouhai you think/thought were the pair in question! I have my own ideas, obviously, but I'm curious to hear your reasoning— of even who you'd want them to be!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading! Special thanks to Aru for helping me edit (and for letting me spend 4 hours writing it in her room ^^)


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